Tag: Big Business

What do you get when you combine behavioural science with big data and use the new Frankenstein hybrid to better influence people’s thoughts, opinions and desires? Why, psychographics of course! Join James today as he delves into the murky world of billionaire hedge fund owners, creepy thought manipulators and the Trump campaign.

The Federal Reserve in the United States just released a new report showing that “Total Household Wealth” in the United States has reached a record $94.8 trillion.

That’s an impressive figure.

Even more impressive is that Total Household Wealth has increased by $40 trillion since the lows of the Great Recession in 2009.

No doubt there’s probably a multitude of central bankers and bureaucrats toasting their success in having engineered such magnificent prosperity.

And it’s certainly an achievement worth celebrating. As long as you don’t look too closely at the data.

Total Household Wealth is exactly what it sounds like– the total net worth of every person in the United States, from Bill Gates down to the youngest newborn baby.

So when you add up all the 330+ million folks in the Land of the Free and tally up their combined net worth, the total is $94 trillion.

The thing is that the VAST majority of that wealth, especially the incredible growth over the last 8 years, has been from increases in just two asset classes: real estate and the stock market.

In fact, stocks and real estate alone account for roughly 2/3 of the wealth increase since 2009.

I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Now, simultaneously, we see plenty of other interesting data, also published by the Federal Reserve and US federal government.

Both the Fed and Census Bureau, for example, tell us that over 80% of businesses in the US are “nonemployer” companies, i.e. businesses which only employ one person (the owner), and often provide his/her primary source of income.

Yet according to the Federal Reserve, only 35% of these small businesses are profitable. Most are operating at a loss.

In other words, only 35% of the companies which make up 80% of American businesses are profitable.

You’re probably already doing the arithmetic– this means that a whopping 72% of all US businesses are NOT profitable.

That hardly sounds like record wealth to me.

Shifting gears, there’s the little factoid that an astounding 40% of young Americans are living with their parents– the highest percentage in the last 75 years.

And who can blame them considering student debt in the Land of the Free also hit a record $1.4 trillion three months ago, more than double the amount since the Great Recession.

Speaking of record debt, US credit card debt passed a record $1 trillion, and total US consumer credit hit a record $3.8 trillion last month.

Again, all of this hardly seems like ‘wealth’ to me.

Then there’s the issue of wages, which have remained essentially flat since the 2009 Great Recession if you adjust for inflation.

According to the US Department of Labor, inflation-adjusted wages, aka “real hourly compensation” in the US fell an annualized 0.9% last quarter, and fell a dismal 5.6% in the previous quarter.

Adjusted for inflation, the average American isn’t making any more money.

Once again, this is a pitiful excuse for ‘wealth.’

American businesses aren’t more productive either.

The same Labor Department report shows that productivity in the Land of the Free was flat in the first quarter of this year.

And productivity actually declined in 2016– something that hasn’t happened in at least the last 50 years.

Not to mention total economic growth in the Land of the Free has been pretty pitiful, logging a pathetic 1.6% last year.

And GDP growth in the first quarter of 2017 was just 1.2% on an annualized basis.

The US economy has exceed hasn’t surpassed 3% growth in more than 10-years, and it’s only happen two times so far in this millennium.

Seriously? This is “wealth”?

Look, I get it. Houses are ‘worth’ more than they used to be, and the stock market is much higher.

But these effects are heavily influenced by the trillions of dollars that was conjured out of thin air by the Federal Reserve.

ExxonMobil may be the most telling example.

In early September 2008, just prior to the financial crisis, Exxon had recently reported revenues of $72 billion, with $11.1 billion in net operating cashflow.

For the first quarter of 2017 the company reported revenues of $61 billion and net operating cashflow of $8 billion.

Plus, ExxonMobil managed to add nearly $20 billion in debt to its balance sheet over that same period.

So over 8-years, Exxon is making less money and has more debt. Yet its stock price is actually HIGHER.

More broadly, 66% of the largest companies in the US that have given estimates of their earnings for next quarter have issued “negative guidance”.

Companies expect to make less money. But stocks are near all-time highs.

Does this make any sense? Is that also wealth?

No.

This is nothing more than the result of paper money that has been created by central bankers, allocated to a tiny financial elite, and dumped into the stock market.

It’s the same with real estate. Sure, prices are higher. But it’s not because of fundamentals.

In terms of population, there’s only been a 7% increase in the number of households in the United States since 2009.

There’s been a commensurate increase in the supply of homes as well.

So in terms of supply/demand fundamentals, the average price nationwide shouldn’t be that much higher.

But take a look at this chart, courtesy of the Federal Reserve.

The red line shows interest rates, which have been generally falling since 1990. The blue line shows home prices, which have been rising like crazy since 2012.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to spot the correlation: record low interest rates mean higher home prices.

This isn’t wealth.

It’s just phony paper.

And as the Great Recession showed in late 2008, phony paper wealth can go ‘poof’ in an instant.

With that in mind, it may be time to consider taking some of that paper wealth off the table and setting it aside for a rainy day.

About the Author

Simon Black is an international investor, entrepreneur, and founder of Sovereign Man. His is about using the experiences from his life and travels to help you achieve more freedom, make more money, keep more of it, and protect it all from bankrupt governments.

A few months ago, I was notified by my some friends that Amazon was censoring my book reviews due to the nature of the topics. My instincts about this make me think this is because these book reviews, just like those of other individuals, are in fact being read, and taken into consideration by people. As such, all of these reviews stand to help individual realize some deeper truths that are not ruminated upon, or even covered by the mainstream establishment. Such is the power of the written word that we all have, and one of the many reasons why censorship is on the rise.

Jumping right into the cauldron of censorship, Amazon has censored many reviews of mine over the last year. One of the first censorship instances I noticed was my review of the book The Secret Space Program & Breakaway Civilization [Richard Dolan Lecture Series Book 1] by Richard Dolan. If you sift through all 5-Star reviews, you will not see my review anywhere. However, you can see proof of the submission through a workaround by clicking on the picture under “customer images”, which is the only one available, and seeing the review under the alias ZyPhReX titled, ‘A Salient Excursion Into The Secret Space Program & Breakaway Civilization Concept, which was posted on August 31, 2016. That’s the only way to see I reviewed the book, and if it wasn’t for the picture having been attached, nobody would even know it existed. Evidence of this can be seen in this screenshot below:

If that was all the censorship taking place, it would be bad enough, but there’s more.

Amazon has also censored my review of the book, Sekret Machines: Gods: Volume 1 of Gods Man & War by Tom DeLonge & Peter Levenda, which was published earlier this year on March 10, 2017. Again, if you search for the review of my book under the same alias, it is nowhere to be found. Similarly, you can see a picture, the middle one in customer images, of my submission for it. It’s a carbon-copy circumstance of the above scenario. Evidence of this can be seen below.

In similar fashion, just a few days ago I realized that Amazon has censored a new review I just published on the phenomenal work by Dr. Mercola called Fat For Fuel – A Revolutionary Diet To Combat Cancer, which was just released. This alternative health book stands to help countless people take back their health. I posted the review the book yesterday, and although it was shown as one of the reviews yesterday and could be seen by others, it’s nowhere to be found for those seeking additional information today. Evidence of the review being published can be seen below.

As one can gather, if I have already reviewed the book, there’s no possible reason for it not to be showing, except that of censorship. I would chalk up a lone incident to coincidence, but its way more than that. Those three book reviews are not the only reviews being censored by the way. I could continue to catalog additional evidence, but that would matter not. It shouldn’t have happened in the first place and shows Amazon clearly has an insidious agenda. Obviously, Amazon has shown it does not respect freedoms in any way shape or form.

Given these circumstances, Amazon is leaving a lot to be desired. Similar to all others who have historically controlled information, Amazon is positioning itself at the vanguard of the censorship by controlling what, and what doesn’t get allowed to be shared. That is simply the corporate version of Orwell’s 1984 du jour.

This information is being brought forth in order to show others that reality is being manipulated in more ways than people imagine. When honest and helpful book reviews become the target of blatant censorship, something is incredibly wrong with the system. Then again, Amazon has already shown in the past how easy it is to go into people’s devices and delete a book already purchased without telling people, as they did when 1984 was delete from people’s devices.

The only way to pierce the veil of lies, disinformation and propaganda is by doing your own due diligence and employing keen mental discernment in all instances. Then and only then will we be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, and stand at chance at shifting the system that seeks not only to distort history and facts at every chance, but to also subjugate the individual.

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This article is free and open source. All individuals are encouraged to share this content and have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Zy Marquiez and TheBreakaway.wordpress.com.
___________________________________________________________About The Author:

His other blog, BreakawayConsciousnessBlog.wordpress.com features mainly his personal work, while TheBreakaway.wordpress.com serves as a media portal which mirrors vital information nigh always ignored by mainstream press, but still highly crucial to our individual understanding of various facets of the world.

Walmart and Amazon have surely benefited from government protectionism, but the economy is still free enough to promote competition which ends up benefiting consumers.

Back in 2011 Walmart invested in pricing tools, realizing that Amazon was doing better. Amazon has algorithms which search the internet for the lowest prices, and then set their products to that price. Generally even when the lowest price is for wholesale ($10 for a pack of ten) Amazon will set their price that low even for a single pack of the product ($1 for a pack).

In 2012, the battle between Amazon and Walmart raged over a video game around Christmastime. The price was set around $50 for each retailer, but as a few cents here and there we dropped from the price to gain a tiny edge over competitors, the price of the video game eventually dropped as low as $15.

So that means people were not being overcharged for a game, and it means the companies were not making “obscene” profits on the product. The market corrected the negative aspects of business that would not have been corrected if there was a true monopoly.

Now, the war of prices is a seasoned game of strategy which brings suppliers into the mix. Both Walmart and Amazon reportedly hound product supply companies to lower their prices in order to better compete.

Sometimes, Walmart even encourages suppliers to reorganize their companies so that they can still turn a profit while charging Walmart less. Another tactic employed is to threaten to make their own products which would directly compete with the supplier’s.

Amazon seems to keep their suppliers guessing, using a tactic that The 48 Laws of Power suggests to make sure your opponents cannot entirely gauge your real intentions.

Amazon will even pull products which do not have a large enough profit margin in an attempt to get the price lowered from the suppliers.

Another Amazon tactic is to prohibit some brands from buying ads within the site for a product that Amazon can’t make profitable on a standalone basis. Like paying for prominent placement in a store, a brand can buy ads within Amazon to promote their products. Blocking these ads is another way of burying a product.

“They are playing Jekyll and Hyde,” said an executive at a large grocery goods manufacturer. “At times, it’s all about growth; at times, it’s all about profitability. They keep switching back and forth.”

Everyone loves to complain about Walmart’s profits. Well Amazon accomplished what documentaries, protests, and boycott could not. Walmart’s profits fell 18% last quarter, demonstrating that economic incentives are necessary for change.

Of course there are plenty of other issues; if it is all about price, what about quality? And even if the prices are lower for consumers, what about the workers of these companies, will they suffer?

But the competition among prices proves an economic lesson that will apply to all these scenarios. In the same way that Amazon and Walmart had to lower prices to compete, they will also be forced to compete to attract employees, or to have the best quality products.

Even if Walmart and Amazon are the main players currently, they are still not the only players: there is Target, Overstock, and plenty of other brick and mortar and online retailers. Is it hard for other to compete? Sure, but certainly not impossible, and as Walmart and Amazon are weakened by their fight against each other, third parties will be able to slip in to offer something that neither company does offer.

The Wish App is one example, where you can get crazy good deals if you don’t mind waiting.

The Dollar Shave Club is another example; direct to consumer websites offering products could be on the rise, especially if people tire of dealing with giant retailers.

But the real point is that competition among companies is a good thing for consumers, because it drives costs down. That is what consumers are currently focused on, but consumers could just as easily bring quality up, or improve employee treatment if that were something they felt strongly about.

When businesses react to their customers, they become a reflection of the people. In a sense, Walmart and Amazon offer a democracy where not only do you get to vote with your dollar on how they operate, you can also remove your support entirely by going to a competitor.

Something to Think About

Imagine if government had to compete in this same way, dropping the prices they charge people for their services. And imagine if you could switch back and forth between governments without changing your location. What if government services were simply competitive products delivered by businesses which could attract customers within the same territory, with overlapping jurisdiction?

War would break out! No, it wouldn’t. Pricing wars would, just like now. War is expensive, and only possible in a system where governments plunder their people to fund their violence. No government working on a business model could afford war, and they would do everything possible to avoid violent conflict.

But protection from neighboring warlords would still be an available service, and the government companies vying for your business would compete to deliver what you need, for the lowest cost, just as Walmart and Amazon currently do.

However evil you think corporations are, they are only a product of the governments who protect them, and the people who patronize them. The benefits of competition in the market can be seen even through the government’s smoke and strings. Remove the government from the equation, and consumer choice will only increase.

The Euro is murdering the nations and economies of the EU quite literally. Since the fixed currency regime came into effect, replacing national currencies in transactions in 2002, the fixed exchange rate regime has devastated industry in the periphery states of the 19 Euro members while giving disproportionate benefit to Germany. The consequence has been a little-noted industrial contraction and lack of possibility to deal with resulting banking crises. The Euro is a monetarist disaster and the EU dissolution is now pre-programmed as just one consequence.

Those of you familiar with my thoughts on the economy will know I feel the entire concept of globalization, a term which was popularized under the presidency of Bill Clinton to glamorize the corporativist agenda that had just come into being with creation of the World Trade Organization in 1994, is fundamentally a destructive rigged game of the few hundred or so giant “global players. Globalization destroys nations to advance the agenda of a few hundred giant, unregulated multinationals. It’s based on a disproven theory put forward in the 18th Century by English free trade proponent David Ricardo, known as the Theory of Comparative Advantage, used by Washington to justify removing any and all national trade protectionism in order to benefit the most powerful “Global Players,” mostly US-based.

The faltering US project known as Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership or the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, is little more than Mussolini on steroids. The most powerful few hundred corporations will formally stand above national law if we are foolish enough to elect corrupt politicians that will endorse such nonsense. Yet few have really looked closely at the effect that surrender of currency sovereignty under the Euro regime is having.

Collapse of Industry

The nations of what today is misleadingly known as the European Union follow a concept ratified by a then-far-smaller number of European members–twelve versus 28 states today–of what had been the European Economic Community (EEC). A European version of giganto-mania appeared during the EEC Commission presidency of French globalist politician Jacques Delors when he unveiled what was called the Single European Act in February 1986.

Delors overturned the principle established by France’s Charles de Gaulle, the principle which de Gaulle referred to as “Europe of the Fatherlands.” De Gaulle’s concept of the European Economic Community–then six nations including France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux three–was one in which there would be periodical meetings of the premiers of the six Common Market nations. There, with elected heads of states, policies would be formulated and decisions made. An assembly elected from members of national parliaments would review the actions of the ministers. De Gaulle viewed the Brussels EEC bureaucracy as a purely technical administrative body, subordinate to national governments. Cooperation should be based on the “reality” of state sovereignty. Supranational acquisition of power over individual nations of the EEC was anathema for de Gaulle, rightly so. As with individuals so with nations—autonomy is basic and borders do matter.

Delors’ Single Act proposed to overturn that Europe of the Fatherlands through radical reforms to the EEC aimed at the destructive idea that the diverse nations, with diverse histories, cultures and diverse languages, could dissolve borders and become a kind of ersatz United States of Europe, run top down by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. It in essence is a Mussolini-style corporativist or fascist vision of a non-democratic, non-responsible European bureaucracy controlling populations arbitrarily, answerable only to corporate influence, pressure, corruption.

It was an agenda developed by the largest multinationals of Europe, whose lobby organization was the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT), the influential lobby group of Europe’s major multinationals (by personal invitation only) such as Swiss-based Nestle, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Vodafone, BASF, Deutsche Telekom, ThyssenKrupp, Siemens and other giant European multinationals. The ERT, not surprisingly, is the major lobby in Brussels pushing adoption of the TIPP trade deal with Washington.

The ERT was a major driver for the 1986 Delors Single Act proposals that led to the Frankenstein Monster called the European Union. The idea of the EU is creation of a top-down central unelected political authority that would decide the future of Europe without democratic checks and balances, at heart a truly feudal notion.

The concept of a single United States of Europe, dissolving national identities that went back more than a thousand years or more, can be traced back to the 1950’s when the Bilderberg Meeting of 1955 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, first discussed the creation out of the six member nations of the European Coal and Steel Community of “a common currency, and…this necessarily implied the creation of a central political authority.” De Gaulle was not present.

The project to create a monetary union was unveiled at a 1992 EEC conference in Maastricht, Holland following the unification of Germany. France and Italy, backed by Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, forced it through over German misgivings in order to “contain the power of a unified Germany.” British Tory press railed against Germany as an emerging “Fourth Reich,” conquering Europe economically, not militarily. Ironically, this is what has very much de facto emerged from the structures of the Euro today. Because of the Euro, Germany economically dominates the entire 19 Eurozone countries.

The problem with the creation of the European Monetary Union (EMU) prescribed in Maastricht Treaty is that the single currency and the “independent” European Central Bank were launched without being tied to a political single legal entity, a genuine United States of Europe. The Euro and the European Central Bank is a supranational creation without answerability to anyone. It was done in absence of a genuine organic political union such as that created when 13 states, with common English language and following a commonly-fought war of independence from Great Britain, created and adopted the Constitution of the United States of America. In 1788 the delegates from the 13 states agreed to establish a republican form of government grounded in representing the people in the states, with separation of powers between the legislative, judicial and executive branches. Not so the EMU.

The EU bureaucrats have a cute name for this disconnect between unelected central bank officials of the ECB controlling the economic destiny of the 19 member states with 340 million citizens of the so-called Eurozone. They call it the “democratic deficit.” That deficit has grown gargantuan since the 2008 global financial and banking crisis and the emergence of the not-sovereign European Central Bank

Collapse of Industry

The creation of the Euro single currency since 1992 has put the Euro member states into an economic strait-jacket. The currency value cannot be changed to boost national exports during economic downturns such as that experienced since 2008. The result has been that the largest industrial power in the Eurozone, Germany, has benefited from the stable euro while weaker economies on the periphery of the EU, including most notably, France, have endured catastrophic consequences to the rigid Euro rate.

In a new report, the Dutch think-tank, Gefira Foundation, notes that French industry has been contracting since the adoption of the euro. “It was not able to recover after either of the 2001 or 2008 crises because the euro, a currency stronger than the French franc would be, has become a burden to France’s economy. The floating exchange rate works like an indicator of the strength of the economy and like an automatic stabilizer. A weaker currency helps to regain competitiveness during a crisis, while a stronger currency supports consumption of foreign goods.”

The study notes that because of this currency strait-jacket, ECB’s policy has created a Euro too high versus other major currencies to enable France to maintain exports since the economic downturn of 2001. The Euro has led to increased imports into France and because France had no exchange rate flexibility, her industry “could not regain international competitiveness in the world’s market after the 2001 crisis, so its industry has been slowly dying ever since.” They lost the economic stabilizing tool of a floating exchange rate.

Today, according to the Eurostat, industry makes up 14.1% of the French total gross value added. In 1995 it was 19.2%. In Germany it is 25.9%. Most striking has been the collapse of a once-vibrant French car industry. Despite the fact that world car production almost doubled from 1997 to 2015 from 53 million to 90 million vehicles annually, and while Germany increased its car production by 20% from 5 to 6 million, from the time France joined the Euro in 2002, French car production almost halved from nearly 4 million to less than 2 million.

Euro Bail-in Laws

The same Euro strait-jacket is preventing a serious reorganization of troubled banks across the Eurozone since the 2008 crisis. The creation of the supra-national, non-sovereign European central Bank has made it impossible for member countries of the Eurozone to resolve their banking problems created during the excesses of the pre-2008 period. The case of Italy with its request to make a state bailout of its third-largest bank, Monte dei Paschi, is exemplary. Though draconian layoffs and closings have for the moment eased panic, Brussels refused to permit a $5 billion Italian state rescue of the bank, instead demanding the bank revert to a new EU banking law called “Bail in.” While they may not yet dare to implement bail-in just yet in Italy, it is EU law and will certainly be the instrument of choice by the unelected Eurogroup when the next banking crisis hits.

Bail-in, while it sounds better than taxpayer bailout, actually requires that a bank’s depositors be robbed of their deposits to “rescue” a failed bank, if Brussels or the unelected Eurogroup decides such a bail-in of deposits is needed after bank bond holders and stock holders and creditors have not been able to meet the losses. This bail-in confiscation was applied in Cyprus banks in 2013 by the EU. Depositors there with over €100,000 either lost 40% of their money.

If you are a depositor in, say, Deutsche Bank, and the stock shares are tanking, as they have been, and legal troubles threaten their existence, and the German government refuses to talk bailout, but rather leaves the bank to potential bail-in, you can be sure every depositor with an account over €100,000 will begin to look to other banks, worsening the crisis for Deutsche Bank. Then all other remaining depositors would be vulnerable to bail-in as was initially proposed by the Eurogroup for Cyprus banks.

Surrender of monetary sovereignty

Under the Euro and the rules of Eurogroup and ECB, decisions are no longer sovereign but central, taken by not-democratically appointed faceless bureaucrats like Holland Finance Minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, President of Eurogroup. During the Cyprus bank crisis Dijsselbloem proposed confiscating all depositor money, big or small, to recapitalize the banks. He was forced to back down at the last minute, but it shows what is possible in the coming EU bank crisis that is pre-programmed by the defective Euro institution and its fatally flawed ECB.

Under current Eurozone rules, effective January, 2016, EU national governments are prohibited from taxpayer rescue of their banks, preventing orderly resolution of bank liquidity problems until too late. Germany has adopted a bank bail-in law as have other EU governments. The new bail-in rules are the result of a bureaucratic directive from the unelected, faceless bureaucrats of the EU Commission known as the EU Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (“BRRD”).

In 1992 when Swedish banks went into insolvency as a real estate bubble popped, the state stepped in with Securum, a bad-bank/good bank rescue. The bankrupt banks were temporarily nationalized. Non-performing real estate loans in billions were put into the state corporation, Securum, the so-called bad bank. The risk-addicted bank directors were dismissed. The nationalized banks, minus bad loans, were allowed, under state management, to resume lending and return to profit before being reprivatized as the economy improved. The non-performing real estate became again profitable as the economy recovered over several years, and after five years the state could sell the assets for a total net profit and liquidate Securum. Taxpayers were not burdened.

ECB Prevents Bank Resolutions

Now, as the EU faces a new round of bank solvency crises with banks like Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and major banks across the Eurozone facing new capital crises, because the EU lacks a central taxation power, no flexible tax-payer or bank nationalization is possible. New national bank rules adjusted to local circumstances are not possible. Measures to give troubled banks time such as allowing a temporary moratorium on foreclosures and repossessions if people fall behind on their payments, outsourcing national electronic payment system to commercial banks, are not possible.

The EuroZone has no central fiscal authority, so such solutions cannot be implemented. Banking system problems are only being solved by monetary authorities, by the insane ECB policy of negative interest rates, so-called Quantitative Easing where the ECB buys endless billions of Euros in dodgy corporate and state debt with no end in sight, and in the process making insurance companies and pension funds insolvent.

The answer is definitely not that proposed by the kleptocratic George Soros and others, namely to give the unelected Brussels super-state the central fiscal power to issue Brussels Euro bonds. The only possible solution short of destroying the economies of the entire Eurozone in the coming next European bank solvency crisis, is to dismantle the Frankenstein Monster called the European Monetary Union with its ECB and common currency.

The individual countries in the 19 country Euro Zone do not form what economists call an “optimum currency area,” never did. The economic problems of a Greece or Italy or even France are vastly different from those of Germany, or of Portugal or Spain.

In 1997 before his death, one of my least-favorite economists, Milton Friedman, stated, “Europe exemplifies a situation unfavorable to a common currency. It is composed of separate nations, speaking different languages, with different customs, and having citizens feeling far greater loyalty and attachment to their own country than to a common market or to the idea of Europe.” On that, I have to say, he was right. It’s even more so the case today. The Euro and its European Central Bank are murdering Europe as effectively as the Second World War did, only without the bombs and rubble.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

AT&T Mulls Reinvention for Web With $86 Billion Time Warner Deal … DirecTV parent wants to own leading Hollywood film, TV studio … Merger accord could be reached Sunday, announced by Monday … Time Warner Inc. and AT&T Inc. have survived the evolution of color TV and cable over the decades. Now they’re merging to adapt to the latest technological shifts: smartphones and streaming. -Bloomberg

Another Bloomberg article that makes it sound like such a vast merger is business-as-usual. But it’s not. It’s just a furtherance of the technocratic, corporate-judicial monopoly that passes for a “free-market” in the West.

Thomas Jefferson and other US founders were so worried about bankers and corporations that they made sure money production was left in the hands of individuals. Need money? You could dig gold and silver out of the ground. The federal government would weigh and stamp the metal. It was a confirmation process not a creative one.

When it came to corporations, history showed clearly their destructive nature. The legacy of the horrific East India Company was, for one thing, a US Constitution that made it very difficult for large corporations to emerge. In the US, the power to regulate corporations was given to states, and for good reason.

Before the Civil War (and the inevitable destruction of the republic) corporations hardly existed. And for good reason.

Here from Podacademy.com

The East India Company was in existence for over 250 years – from 1600-1858. It was the biggest corporation in world history.

Largely forgotten in the UK, it was responsible for the opium wars with China, it contributed to devastating famines in India, and was a perpetrator of cruel employment practices in Bangladesh and other British colonies.

The East India Company was chartered by the Queen and even ran its own army at one point. Sooner or later, no doubt, US companies will get to this point. We can actually see this starting to happen with the emergence of mercenaries organized and directed via non-governmental enterprises.

The US government is titanic, intrusive and increasingly authoritarian. But corporations are starting to rival the government in size and heft. This is how genuine fascism occurs. When society’s organizing elements, private and public, become so large they dominate everything else.

The larger social facilities are, the less room there is for anyone else. The situation is complicated in the West by banking control, mostly out of the City of London. Secretive elements of intelligence agencies run things on the ground throughout the West.

And yet … as we often point out, corporations in the modern age are not inevitable, nor is the technocratic fascism accompanying them. Get rid of corporate person-hood, intellectual property rights, monopoly central banking (and intrusive regulations) and corporations will shrink back down to normal proportions.

Could it happen? It will sooner or later, when everything finally begins to fall apart. The market will re-emerge. In fact, it’s the way the US was organized originally and responsible in large part for the miracle of industrial creativity and wealth that marked pre-Civil War America for many (though not Indians, African Americans, etc.).

Markets work. Anything else leads to the destruction of society either in the short- or long-term. History repeats, and shows us the lessons we should learn.

Conclusion: Unfortunately, there are other forces at work. This latest merger is not happening by accident. It is surely an attempt to further control the Internet and related technologies. It is portrayed as a market – “capitalist” – phenomenon but it is nothing of the sort.